The Price of Freedom
“You don’t even know what freedom is.” The words crashed their way through smoke and air, landing with a resounding thump at the center of my eardrum. Kevin and I had we’re sitting out on the porch, toasting the fading September sunlight with a case of beer and cigarettes. I could hear the ember burning away, each drag giving breath to the small fire encased in a dry paper tube of smoldering tobacco leaves. I gazed out at the wavering tree line, separating the maples, birches, and oak trees into individuals and pairs, the way my slight case of OCD had taught me to do many years back. Everything is neat and orderly and makes rational and logistical sense, although in retrospect that was the oldest line of bullshit I’d snort to keep my despondency at bay. It happened less and less frequent the older I got, but some days even getting out of bed I would consider a victory.
“You know what freedom is man? Freedom is being able to wake up when you want, go to the job you own, do what you love, and have fun doing it, while making money as you’re doing work. Tom, I gotta say, you’re always so self-conscious about making money, yet you’re basically slaving away for long hours at a hard job to barely make bills to pay rent and buy food so you can’t say you don’t want to make money.” I took a heavy drink and choked back another smoke. “Can you tell me honestly, that you feel free?”
I stared at him, shifting through the immediate answers I knew to be only defensive comebacks, digging my way toward the truth and begrudgingly pulling it out. He was right in a way, I guess in the only way my ego would allow him to be while maintaining its frailly plausible Nephilim complex. Fucking money. Why does it always come down to this?
I never quite figured out why the concept of making money, and a lot of it, terrified and angered me. Part of me thinks that a large amount of money would change me, change my moral outlook, and I didn’t want to corrupt myself by working for a goal of making money so I kept to labor jobs, blue-collar city worker jobs, office hands, or pizza delivery boy where the money I made was earned through work and services. I tried the salesperson gig once back in the end of college but as it turned out, the very essence of being a salesperson is based on deception, false promises, smooth talking, and saying anything necessary so long as you made that sale. Frankly, I was never any good at lying and I’m not the kind of person to sacrifice their moral conduct for a paycheck.
As it is, I work full time as a server, bringing expensively tiny dishes to old rich folks who don’t care enough to move their cellphones and empty glasses out of the way so another dish can be properly placed on their table. Taking shit from managers, chefs, and the expo on a daily basis for things that are not in my control or responsibility is just a part of the job. Hard labor for ill efficient pay has a way of breaking down even the strongest of people, no matter for what point or purpose they have in working under such conditions. I’m not free, I’m not happy, and I know it.
“You have the ability to change the situation you are in. You can still wake up, put on your boots, and kick the world in the ass. Think about all the people struggling from physical injury or traumatic events, people who make getting up in the morning a project rather than the first steps toward the shower. How great would it be for these people to add creating music to their recovery?”
I hadn’t thought of that before but upon hearing the question, I started to see how creating music through therapy could be useful. The healing power of music was already prevalent in helping Alzheimers patients become more cognitively active, so it was not so far off to see that music could help people in many different states of therapy. Kevin continued.
“I have a cousin who’s paralyzed from the waist down and just finding the energy and motivation to get moving in the morning is hard for him. He is confined to a prison on two wheels and will never know freedom again and it hurts me to see him like that, a guy who used to be so full of life confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life and I know he’s not the only injured person who’s struggling with coping and recovery. I want to give people struggling in therapy and personal strife an outlet they can go to and use, whether it’s to create music through motion and dance, or calm themselves down during difficult exercises when each stretch creates a different groove and sound and each time they work through their pain, Puppet Master will help make their recovery process that much better.”
Helping people in pain have an easier life, now that’s a cause I could get behind. With all the difficulty we face as human beings, I’ve always gone out of my way to help people, and working for a company that wants to do just that makes me want to play as big of a role as I can. Help people, help each other, and we might just make the world a better place.
“So Tom, you ready for the party?”
